Find Hidden Storage… Behind Doors | Clutter Video Tip

http://www.ClutterDiet.com Get organized with home organizing tips from professional organizers at The Clutter Diet. Do you feel like every inch of your space is being utilized and still there’s not enough? Have you run out of drawers and shelves and counters? In this video Lorie Marrero is sharing one of her favorite places for storage- doors! Following these strategies will give you more visible, usable space. These Clutter Video Tips are posted frequently here on our clutterdiet organizing channel. You can search Twitter for #ClutterVideoTip also to find comments on our organizing tips. Lorie Marrero is the creator of ClutterDiet.com and the author of The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. Lorie also serves as the national spokesperson for Goodwill Industries International and ambassador of the Donate Movement.

Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today I’m going to share with you one of my best hidden storage secrets. Now, we talk about going vertical a lot when we’re looking for storage. So we’re usually talking about a wall where we’re trying to put some cabinets or shelves and we’re going vertical up that wall. But what most people haven’t thought about is that the back of a door is really another wall space that you have available for you [POP]. So it’s a blank canvas for you for storage.

Here I’m standing next to our pantry door where I have glued on some tiles that allow me to use this as a bulletin board. So we pin up little notices and things, some quick reference information [POP] for our family here. But this is so useful, if I didn’t have as large of a pantry as I happened to have in this home, I would definitely be using the back of this door for a big pantry wrack like you see here. So you can have lots of boxes and cans on that, and it really expands your storage. If you Google “over door storage” or “over the door storage,” you will find tons of products that are made specifically for using on the back of a door. And really most of them don’t even require installation. A lot of them have been designed to hook over the top of the door so you don’t even have to use any tools.

One of the best uses of the back of a door is these simple shoe pockets. These are so versatile. They’re made for shoes, but you can use them for almost anything. Here I’m showing what we did in our Women’s Day reader Linda’s home, “Hi Linda,” in Michigan, for our Project Declutter [POP] series. And we have her home office where she’s got lots of things she uses to make greeting cards for her home-based business. So all of the things you see in these shoe pockets are hole punches, different, various kinds of decorative punches, for these greeting cards. You can put Barbie dolls in them, you can put all kinds of kids toys and knickknacks, as well as shoes, or mittens, or gloves, whatever fits in these pockets. But you can see what incredible storage this earns for you with a simple installation of hooks over the door.

So another over-the-door thing is just hooks. So you can hang anything you want on the back of the door. I have a product I really love here that I’m showing that’s called “The Hinge It,” and I find that builders usually don’t put towel wracks in, in an adequate way, and you usually need more towel space for hanging in a bathroom. So this goes behind the door of maybe your water closet in your bathroom and you can hide away some of the towels that you’re trying to hang up and dry. And you can hang your bathrobe on a hook on the back of a door, lots of different things. You can hang jewelry organizers, I can go on and on.

Here’s a picture of our Woman’s Day reader Pam in Project Declutter, her closet where we have her scarves that we’re showing, and she got visibility to her whole scarf collection, so she can see that when she opens the door. Again, it’s like having a whole other wall space. So she has that whole collection whenever she’s choosing one of her favorites. She loves scarves, as you can see. So, again, Google “over the door,” you’re going to find all kinds of solutions. And if you need help with your storage space, we can help you with that. Seven days a week we have a team of professional organizers on-line helping our members in the Message Board area of our Membership site. And that is done for about the price of a pizza. We are directly consulting with you with your personal questions. You can upload photos and show us what’s going on in your space, and we help you get unstuck. You can find out more at http://www.clutterdiet.com/learnmore.

See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

13 comments

Hi Senix, thanks for sharing your view. I agree that every inch of space does not always need to be utilized and that simplicity can make people very happy. But, when someone is dealing with a small space and really needs additional room for tools- behind the door is a great option. ﻿

If it all fits in the closet, it's organized. When you add storage to a door it's just organized hoarding. Although "door storage" sounds great it's just an excuse to keep more things than you can use. Being organized is not the same as creating more areas for a person's "collections" to be stored in. Less is more and simplicity does actually make people happy. :)﻿

The use of doors is awesome… I was using an over the door solution but it rubbed into the frame and made marks so I had to remove that…. but, I think this is a great solution for most individuals. Thank you for sharing with us. ﻿

Iddiva, be sure to consider other vertical surfaces. You can buy the shoe organizers with the clean pockets and "cut them to fit" inside kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinet doors. You can even hang one on the wall from a Command hook (since you're renting). Some people even hang one in between the shower curtain and the shower liner, to "hide" items they need to store in the bathroom!﻿

Ugh, bifold doors, my nemesis! You can't do a whole lot with them because of the way they fold up on themselves. Sadly they are a bit of a dead end esp if you are renting. On Pam's closet shown in my video there, we took out bifold doors and replaced them with French doors so we would be able to store the scarves. ﻿